The Tragic Design and Marketing of Theranos

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Steve Jobs was a masterful marketer. He was a brilliant businessman. He knew how to brand himself and the products he made. Whether it was for Apple, Atari, Next, or Pixar, Steve Jobs refused to make crap.

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Despite how despised Jobs was (and we was) he was not known for making dangerous shit.

But Steve Jobs was not some drop-out hippie druggie. Yes, he was into new age philosophy, use of psychedelic drugs, and holistic health. And he was just as technically proficient as his programmers. He had the capacity to help them see his vision beyond their own. That’s what took the idea of a personal computer into something part of our everyday lives. That’s what took Apple beyond aesthetics and into a functional design.

And when Steve Jobs made products for public consumption, it was as if he took the Hippocratic Oath: First, do no harm.

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The tragedy of Theranos is not simply that Elizabeth Holmes used deceptive design and marketing to defraud investors and potentially harm the public. It's that Holmes thought that's how design and marketing are used.

During Steve Job’s tenure, Apple did not knowingly ship desktops, laptops, iPhones, or iPads that overheated to the point where it could injure someone. He did not procure millions of dollars in funding a then-unknown smartphone, by putting a piece of glass on a piece of metal and saying “beep-boop-beep-beep-beep!” Despite how despised Jobs was (and we was) he was not known for making dangerous shit.

Elizabeth Holmes, founder, and CEO of Theranos admitted to admiring Steve Jobs and wanted to be like him. She even adopted his trademark black turtleneck and a confident stance. She even adopted his Apple-era clean design in the marketing.  She adopted the clean, non-threatening, design pioneered by companies like Apple, to belie the fact that her company was putting out an actual threat. In all her admiration of Steve Jobs, she wanted to skip the part that required rigorous competence, disciplined iteration, and R&D with a moral compass.

Elizabeth Holmes missed that lesson.

Video Series | 60 Minutes | The Theranos Deception

But maybe, so did we. As those of us who are part of design and marketing community, we did very little to warn people about Holmes’ hustle. While a journalist for Wall Street Journal, simply pulled one thread and was able to unravel the entire fraud, magazines like Bloomberg Business were putting her on the cover of their magazine. Engineers, industrial designers, and technical illustrators went along and helped pedal an image of a product that didn’t actually work. It was eventually revealed that the Edison, Holmes’ proprietary blood-testing machine, was made of cheap plastic parts that broke off, and the entire machine would overheat.

The tragedy of Theranos is not simply that Elizabeth Holmes used deceptive design and marketing to defraud investors and potentially harm the public. It’s that Holmes thought that’s how design and marketing are used.